Feel the dread

Joel Edgerton (left) plays a father who is living off the grid with his family when an intruder arrives.

“Wait, what?” my neighbor whispered to her friend during the closing credits of It Comes at Night, “I’m so confused.” As we filed out of the auditorium, I heard at least two viewers say “That was so dumb.”

I chalk those responses up to faulty expectations. The new psychological horror feature from Trey Edward Shults — who won the John Cassavetes Award at the 2016 Independent Spirit Awards for his debut feature, Krisha — is certainly a departure from conventional horror films.

It Comes at Night delivers vivid and compelling storytelling, and its narrative efficiency provides a much-needed respite from bloated summer blockbusters. Rather than shocking you with spectacle, it overwhelms you with dread over what we can do to each other when confronting a threat to our loved ones.

Joel Edgerton (The Gift, Loving) stars as Paul, a fiercely independent man protecting his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) from a mysterious plague. The family lives off the grid in a large boarded-up house in the woods that Paul has transformed into a fortress with only one door. One way in, one way out.

When things go bump in the night, Paul discovers a man trying to break through that door. After Paul subdues him, Will (Christopher Abbott) claims that he was simply looking for food and supplies for his own family. Paul must first verify that Will, his wife Kim (Riley Keough), and their young son Andrew do not have the deadly illness before deciding whether to share resources to survive.

When the drama achieves a temporary equilibrium, the film feels like The Walking Dead has invaded Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (director Shults crewed on three Malick films). An omnipresent threat hangs over every scene, but Shults foregrounds the textures of life lived simply. A bath for little Andrew provides a beautiful image.

The most compelling scenes focus on tensions within the house rather than the external threat. The dark, lantern-lit interiors of the house not only provide the required spooky atmosphere, but the half-lit faces also force you to pay close attention to eyes possibly masking ulterior motives.

Shults makes occasional missteps. Young Travis’ dream sequences are clearly cued (despite my neighbor’s confusion), and provide some of the film’s most vivid images. But these scenes also deliver several genre cliches, including several gasping-wake-ups and even a classic double-wake-up. Even I was tempted to mumble “This is dumb” at those moments.

Like Robert Eggers’ The Witch and several recent experiments in the genre, It Comes at Night simply doesn’t deliver what many mainstream horror fans want and expect. If you want violent spectacle, images like Andrew’s bath will indeed seem dumb. Shults instead delivers suspense and violence prompted by men with the same goal — protecting their family — which makes the violence far more harrowing than pure spectacle.